What's a human life worth? American Medical Response, the private ambulance company that has been contracted by Sumter County to provide 911 ambulance services, thinks your lives are worth $8 an hour. That's what the EMTs who work up to 24 hours at a time are paid. That's what I was paid for the first two years of my career there too. People protest all the time for fast food workers who already earn more than these EMTs do, why isn't anybody picketing for them? Well now we are. AMR in Sumter County won't even negotiate higher pay or increased benefits for those employees with the union anymore. How are they supposed to save lives if they can't even financially support their own? Let's take a deeper look at this.
American Medical Response is a private ambulance transport company that was founded in 1992 and currently operates in 39 states from coast to coast. They are currently the largest private ambulance company in the nation with 6,275 vehicles, 12 aircraft and 26,188 employees staffing and supporting those operations. Last year AMR transported 4.4 million patients with vehicles traveling the equivalent of 84 coast to coast round trips a day. Envision Healthcare Corporation, which owns AMR, reported net revenues of $1.39 billion and net earnings of $92 million last year.
So here we've got a massive company that is very profitable. Healthcare is an expensive business and AMR seems to be doing exceedingly well with that market, their recent acquisition of Rural/Metro Ambulance in 2015 effectively secured their monopoly in the American private medical transport market.
Why am I boring you with all these numbers and regurgitated information you could've found yourself from their website? Because I want you to fully understand how abusive AMR is to these Sumter County employees.
The average pay across the country for EMTs employed by AMR is $13.46 an hour. The EMTs in Sumter make about $8.50. Both of those numbers are too low and are insulting.
So what can we do? Call AMR corporate headquarters and tell them it's wrong to report millions in profits off the backs of dedicated men and women we expect to be there when called. These EMTs struggling to get by aren't asking for anything more than what they already provide for their community; the ability to sleep soundly at night.
If you call us we'll save you. Will you call and save us?
AMR corporate HQ 303-495-1200
Toll free 877-244-4890